Hi there, I am just a guy trying to get a bit of peace in his life.
You know spend time with my partner and our child, have some time to go fishing.
Find a way to stop working and retire.
Simple things really...

Saturday, June 29, 2013

It is not often that a fishing lure is found on a wedding table.
But when half of the party is coming from the family of one of the most famous Australian fishing lure designer's, no one should be surprised to see a few lures invited to the marriage banquet.

Not long ago, as I was packing up an office in which I worked for many years, I decided to send back to Rob Gaden two lures that he had graciously lent for an exhibition project I had worked on.
Messages were sent to Mr. Gaden, asking him where I should mail the lures.
His reply was that I could keep one of them for myself, and send him the other one.
That in itself was already a great present, thanks Rob.
But it doesn't stop there.
He told me to call his daughter and to give her the lure in Darwin, instead of sending it interstate.
So I called her...

A few days later, she came to pick up the lure, and had a present for me.
And what a present!

Her dad had asked her if she could give me one of the lures he had done for her wedding guest, the previous year.
This might seem not much to some of you, but to me, it was an absolutely great present.

Taryn had married Phil in July 2012, and her dad had a series of the famous Classic Barra +10 in a special colour, with a special packaging made for the occasion.
Want to see it?

The Wedding Lure.

The writing on the back of the lure says: Taryn & Phil - July 2012.

The back of the packaging says that it is to celebrate their marriage, has some short information about both of the families, and the exact date of the wedding.

I will be honest with you, when Taryn gave me the lure, it was such a surprise that I got some goose bump and the hairs of my arms started to stand straight.

This to me was a very nice present, from a very personal moment in her life.

I now feel really privileged to have one in my collection, and you can be sure that this one will never be taken out of it's packaging.

Thank you Taryn and Rob, this will be a very precious addition to what my partner call my addiction.

I know some of you might say, that a lure is made for fishing and that I should try it, but I will not.

Thursday, June 13, 2013

Haven't posted in a long time, things with the work situation might change for the better in the next few weeks, so I should then be able to get back into it.

Ok so first a very quick thing about the round 3 of the 2013 Top End Barra Series...
It was not long ago, it was on the famous Daly River, and it was real hard fishing...
74 participants, fishing day and night over a full weekend...
Only twelve Barramundi over the legal size caught over the weekend...
None by me...
But still had a very good time!

Now back to what this post is mostly about, my first try with a video head-cam.
I got one for free, and wanted to try it.
With my luck on the fishing side, seemingly on holidays very very far away at the moment, I decided to do the testing with a top water lure. In case no fishes were interested in my effort. A popper producing big splashes on the water surface, would give me a few minutes of interesting footage anyway.

So I went to one of the city rock wall early in the morning of a public holiday, and started to flick away and go pop pop pop on the water.
Nothing happened, and I quickly wanted to try a chrome slice, as it is one of my favourite form of fishing.
The chrome slice was pulled out of the bag, and casted away a few hundred times, for nothing.
Then a hard body lure was tried without any better results.

Thinking that I would have to go home soon, I decided to try the popper again, now that the light was a bit better.
But for some reason, I could not get it to pop properly, and started to be sure that it would be a no fish day, with not many interesting footage from my new toy.
Yet, I could see at the end of the rock wall, some mullet getting rather nervous, if not outright stressed, the poor little things.
I could see a change in the water, where the current line break on the end of the rock.
Very flat on one side, and just a tiny little bit choppy on the other side.
This is where I casted my popper, I had often been told that this the kind of places where Queenfish and Trevally could be found.
And I was not lied to, as I got one!

Visioning the film back home showed me that I still have a lot to learn about how to use a video, the film is of pretty poor quality to say the less, I still have to practice, so my films show more water and less sky.
But it is my first one and it made me happy, so here it is:

Darwin Harbour's Queenfish.

All along I din't think that it was a Queenfish, as it didn't mad a single jump.

But I was very happy when I saw that it was one.

The gentleman with a british accent who was fishing next to me, and that I had never meet before, proposed to gaff the fish for me, and did it well, on the first attempt. As I was starting to fillet the bounty, I asked him if he wanted a fillet of it to thank him for his help.

To which he agreed with visible joy. He even asked if he could have the frame of it.

Now I was the happy one, and just finished to cut my fillet and gave him all that was left.

Telling him that he could have it all.

He then asked me if I was going to try for another one, but no, I did not.

I replied that I had enough fish to feed my little family and was happy with that for the day.

Just as I said so, a big splash happened right at our feet, and we could see a few bigger Queenfish cruising the water at speed.

He started to cast a chrome slice toward them, as I left.

I had caught a fish on my first try with my new and first ever video camera, that was going to be the best film in the history of film making!

Well, when I arrived home and looked at it I was slightly disappointed by what I had produced, to be honest. I had a good fish to eat, but obviously needed a lot more practice before making a good film...